, as I was told, ordered a thousand
pounds a week to be distributed in four parts: one quarter to the city
and liberty of Westminster; one quarter or part among the inhabitants
of the Southwark side of the water; one quarter to the liberty and
parts within of the city, exclusive of the city within the walls; and
one-fourth part to the suburbs in the county of Middlesex, and the
east and north parts of the city. But this latter I only speak of as a
report.

Certain it is, the greatest part of the poor or families who formerly
lived by their labour, or by retail trade, lived now on charity; and had
there not been prodigious sums of money given by charitable, well-minded
Christians for the support of such, the city could never have subsisted.
There were, no question, accounts kept of their charity, and of the just
distribution of it by the magistrates. But as such multitudes of those
very officers died through whose hands it was distributed, and also
that, as I have been told, most of the accounts of those things were
lost in the great fire which happened in the very next year, and which
burnt even the chamberlain's office and many of their papers, so I could
never come at the particular account, which I used great endeavours to
have seen.

It may, however, be a direction in case of the approach of a like
visitation, which God keep the city from;--I say, it may be of use to
observe that by the care of the Lord Mayor and aldermen at that time
in distributing weekly great sums of money for relief of the poor, a
multitude of people who would otherwise have perished, were relieved,
and their lives preserved. And here let me enter into a brief state of
the case of the poor at that time, and what way apprehended from them,
from whence may be judged hereafter what may be expected if the like
distress should come upon the city.

At the beginning of the plague, when there was now no more hope but
that the whole city would be visited; when, as I have said, all that had
friends or estates in the country retired with their families; and when,
indeed, one would have thought the very city itself was running out of
the gates, and that there would be nobody left behind; you may be
sure from that hour all trade, except such as related to immediate
subsistence, was, as it were, at a full stop.

This is so lively a case, and contains in it so much of the real
condition of the people, that I think I cannot be too particular in it,
and th